Monthly Archives: April 2008

Forget Brain Age: Researchers Develop Software That Makes You Smarter“The most important point of our work is that we can show that it is possible to improve fluid intelligence,” said Martin Buschkuehl, a psychology researcher based at the University of Bern, Switzerland. “It was assumed that fluid intelligence was immutable.” Fluid intelligence measures how people adapt to new situations and solve problems they’ve never seen before. Fluid intelligence differs from crystallized intelligence, which takes into account skills and knowledge that have been acquired — like vocabulary, grammar and math.”Wired

RallyPoint Handwear Computer Input Device gives soldiers a hand“The Handwear Computer Input Device (HCID) has a whole mess of sensors built-in, including push-button sensors in the pinky, fourth finger and index, finger, a mouse-like sensor in the index finger and a trio of accelerometers on the back of the hand. HCID plugs in via USB, and can be used to activate radio, navigate electronic maps and send commands.”Engadget

Overnewsed but uninformed“Stefan Brautigam is critical of the current news landscape, where according to him, it’s getting harder and harder for an audience to determine the authenticity of the news. With this project, Stefan wants to help users search for sources they can trust. The collection of diagrams describes processes, discloses ownership structures and dependencies within the companies involved in the processing, preparation and delivery of messages. It also allows for easy analysis of user data. The audience can now evaluate and categorize news based on real-life examples, such as the collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis, in addition to having background information and analyses at their fingertips.”visualcomplexity.com

One week of The Guardian“This visual was pretty much focused on the relationships created between headlines, authors, pages, and categories. I wanted to see how much of a mess the relationships could make if they were all surrounding one container (like the square graphs we drew as children, linking adjoining sides by straight lines to create beautiful symmetrical perspectives)”.”visualcomplexity.com

Photos: Art and tech sashay down the runway“Amanda Parkes’ Piezing generates power using the natural gestures of the human body in motion. Around the joints of the elbows and hips of the garment is piezoelectric material that generates electricity in response to applied mechanical stress. The electricity is then stored as voltage in a centralized small battery and later can be discharged for use.”CNET News.com

Gadgets: Manodo Display Makes You OCD About Your Home Energy Usage“If you enjoy observing and controlling the minutiae of your daily life, down to how much CO2 your last shower emitted, consider moving to Sweden and taking part in the Manodo project. Nordic start-up Manodo has created the ultimate smart home gadget, which tells you everything you’ll ever want to know (and maybe some things you don’t) about the resources you’re consuming. In addition to utility usage, the device also gives you information ranging from when the next tram will pass by your stop to weather forecasts into the week to who’s milling outside your door.”Gizmodo

RFID-based robots come to the rescue“rescue workers and robots can jointly apply RFID tags to buildings that have already been checked following a disaster, and write key information to the tags so other teams need only read them with PDAs to discern a particular building’s status, or to obtain a recommendation of where to proceed next. What’s more, as various teams and robots approach via differing paths and read the tags, data can be associated to calculate the tags’ location, and to generate a consistent map for use by the central command post. This is particularly useful, for example, if nearby building structures made of reinforced concrete obstruct GPS satellite signals from being read.”RFID Journal

Gadgets: Seiko SlimStick Fitness Aid Explains Why You’re Fat“Seiko’s Slimstick is a fitness device that will detail calories burned across a day, length of daily activity, total number of steps taken, as well as offer up a relative fitness score to keep you in check. The Slimstick will store 12-weeks worth of data and the aluminum clad gizmo will set you back ¥6,984 ($55.)”Gizmodo

You Didn’t Realize It, But You Really Want Those Twitter Messages In Your Calendar“Subscribe to messages from any Twitter user in any popular desktop or online calendaring application (iCal, Google Calendar, etc.). Those messages are then automatically added to the calendar, at the appropriate day and time. Useful? I don’t know. It’s certainly useful to closely monitor/stalk people (or yourself). “TechCrunch